August 8, 2008

Time and Investment

The supernova has given us a great many gifts. Our access to information today is unparalleled by any time in history. Communication has been altered like never before; our ability to reach and maintain relationships is so great that all the water in the oceans can be surmounted with a dial up connection. We can, and do, use virtual offices to create and execute business operations from great physical distances. And this exponential burst of ability has happened in a scant ten years. Imagine if this curve maintains trajectory. It can’t. It won’t. It wouldn’t. Right?

Would that kind of future breed value? Or could we reach a point where things spiral out of control? A point where information is beyond our imagination today, where it fills every pore of existence until our freedoms are drown for sheer inability to breath. It’s easy to conjure future depictions of Orwell’s 1984, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or Huxley’s Brave New World, but I’ll keep things on a more plausible and placated level. This is not a hierarchal society where all your information is controlled, but an empowered society where information controls you. Where being connected and digitally omniscient becomes ritual.

Even today, the information flood is so strong that my organization level has felt strain. What initially served as sustenance on a career voyage has become a hog’s journey through a forest where every branch carries fruit. Only a few weary paces on the path and my eyes have proven larger than my stomach. Sloth has set in.

When information is available to you at every turn, it naturally loses value. And today the information supernova has created that environment. Anyone can find anything they want to learn about in an instant. Near everyone (well aware of the damning hypocrisy here) is a pundit. So where do you make an investment of your most finite resource? How do you choose which groups are important? At the end of the day, decisions must be made.

The cat is out of the bag. It’s not longer about being able to access the information. It’s about rationing, foresight and investment.